I love this week's list because I get to highlight books that I haven't really talked about yet. I love books that challenge me, and these ones definitely did.
Let's get into it.
Number Five
Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein
This book made me examine my views on femininity and how I want my daughter(s) to be raised.
Orenstein talks a lot about how girls are being sexualized from an early age, which I agree with. Ultimately, however, I didn't agree with most of anything else she had to say. She did get me thinking, though, and I am grateful for that.
Number Four
Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes
Like many philosophy majors, this was the first text I read, and it laid the groundwork for almost every work thereafter.
Descartes made me question most of my presuppositions about knowledge and existence. He also showed me how to construct arguments.
Meditation III was the most influential to me because it was the first time I had read an argument for God outside of Christian apologetics. His arguments are so simple and don't rely upon any outside text, and I had never even considered that the existence of God could be "proven" this way.
Number Three
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
This book was incredibly challenging. Faulkner was experimental with his style, and the Sound in the Fury is completely unique in this aspect. Reading it is mentally strenuous because the reader has to really pull every sentence apart to figure out what is going on.
It's definitely not for everyone, but I loved it, and it was one of the best books I read in 2014.
Number Two
The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer
This is one of my favorite classic Christian books. Tozer definitely had a gift for teaching, and learn I did. Not only did I learn much more about God, but beliefs I had about Him were challenged and dispelled as false.
This book is thin in pages but heavy in content.
Number One
for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange
There are very few works that have affected me as deeply and memorably as this choreopoem. I first found it as a senior in high school, and I carried it with me everywhere I went for a year, rereading it every chance I got and scribbling in its margins.
Shange made me reassess myself as a minority and as a woman. During a time when I was growing into an adult woman, this work became immensely important and impactful to me. Even though the title states that it's "for colored girls," I think that women of any colour could gain something from reading this.
Those are the top 5 books that made me think. What are your favorite thought-provoking reads? Share them in the comments below.
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